Having read many of the books and short stories as a boy, I would rank them as 'entertainingly trashy'. The Americans are a collection of unintentionally hilar

Having read many of the books and short stories as a boy, I would rank them as 'entertainingly trashy'. The Americans are a collection of unintentionally hilarious stereotypes - the rugged hero who saves the beautiful & brilliant damsel in distress and gets everybody swooning over him, the virgin nerd who suddenly gets appreciated by a strong girl, the badass teenager girl who shows all those prejudiced old fools how much ass a badass teenager girl can kick, oh yeah! The 'native' characters are a bit better, because the author is constrained by historical records to make them slightly less cartoonish. Gustav Adolf (& related family) is the designated Good King but he's still an absolute king and occasionally a jerk as a result; Axel Oxenstierna and Richelieu get caricatured as villainous viziers but their reasons for opposing the New American Order do get at least a perfunctory acknowledgment. Non-historical 'native' characters are as two-dimensional as the Americans, though. The reason I do not regret reading the series is that it scratches certain nerdy itches very very well. It's full of wikipedia-type fun facts that gets turned into plot points, like clothing dyes being a big deal, or customary laws of Early Modern Germany being an absolute clusterfuck, and of course all kinds of changing social mores from privacy in the presence of house servants to serving wine to children. It has funny nerd moments like Lennard Torstensson gawking over a micrometer, or when Richelieu is revealed to be the first leader smart enough to acquire a spoiler (a history book from the 'future') and take action over it, in that case refocusing away from costly European wars in order to consolidate control of the New World and set up France to become the dominant world empire in the timeline. I think the short stories are probably the best part of the setting for an adult reader, because they have less focus on the sub-par characters and more focus on the fascinating peculiarities of the time and place. And while the History of kingdoms and religions got derailed pretty early in the series, making historical accuracy kind of a moot point, the little histories of craftsmen and traders get a chance to shine and be properly explored in the short stories.